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Gates Provides Windows Crash Statistic
cybercuzco writes "In an otherwise innocuous article at they NYT (FRRYYY) Bill Gates says that according to error reporting software in windows, 5% of all windows installations crash two or more times every day. Gates goes on to state that Microsoft is looking at charging for some of its software updates that it now distributes for free."
Bill is becoming the world expert on increasing revenue without providing value to his customers.
The 5% number is just skewed heavily by the fact that any poorly written app that crashes is counted. Whenever an app crashes the windows error reporting system fires off a log to microsoft regarding the crash. I bet 90%+ of these crashes have nothing to do with windows.
5% may sound like a small amount, but considering HOW MANY Windows boxes exist on EARTH, that is a HUGE number...
bork bork bork!
If that's not a conservative estimate, call me a liberal.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
I haven't read the article, but I assume that the Poster meant to type 95%. Its OK, we all make mistakes.
There's no way to be sure that it's necessarily Windows that causes the crash; it could be some badly installed rogue software, viruses, crappy system administration, or all of the above. Though no doubt the reflexive Microsoft bashers will blame Microsoft anyway.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
HERE IS THE DIRECT LINK : (Doesn't require you to log in!) Thank you, Google News!
My favorite part: Last week, Microsoft raised its revenue forecast for fiscal 2004 by about $1 billion. At the same time the company also said it had no plans to spend any of its $49 billion cash on major acquisitions or increase dividends, despite recent rumors.
Now, If I'm reading this article correctly, they are indirectly affecting their positive cashflow 'problem' by increasing R&D. The article says that Microsoft expects revenue to increase 6-9% (of total revenue) in 2004; They are going to spend 8% more on R&D (8% more than R&D expenses in 2003)... So this looks like one way that Microsoft is going to slow down their positive cashflow. I can't see anything bad coming from Microsoft spending more on R This should be beneficial to end-users as long as MS doesn't spend all this additional research money finding better ways to make it difficult to pirate Windows.
Hmm, I still think that my Linux workstation is less stable then my Win2k Pro.
:-)
Anyhow, at least people will be able to reference this article when they boast about their Linux stability
crashes more then 2 times ;-)
The other 95% of all Windows installations have the reporting feature disabled...
>>Microsoft is looking at charging for some of
>>its software updates that it now distributes
>>for free."
Buffer ovverflow - $15
Firewall Fix - $45
Service Pack 3 - $300
Knowing that no matter how much patches come out, Linux will be more secure - Pricess
doesn't that give MS an incentive to leave bugs in?
Microsoft charging for Windows Updates is analogous to Ford charging their customers extra for basic safety features which should be free in the first place! What if Ford told you that there was a fatal flaw in your seatbelt system that could allow you to be thrown from the car in a crash, and that the problem was a result of poor engineering on their behalf, and that you had to pay out of your own pocket to fix it! If that happened the government would surely intervene and force Ford to provide the fix for free. I can't belive that Microsoft has the gall to even consider charging us to fix the holes in their systems that are there because of their own fault!
Nothing to push the masses to Linux/Mac like charging for updates & bugfixes.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Mr. Gates stressed that the company's biggest bet is on the next version of Windows.
;-P
Well duh. The company's biggest bet is always on the next version of Windows!
If they said "Well, we're betting the entire company's future on the next version of Microsoft Bob", they're screwed.
It's not a crash. It's...it's... a programmed REST BREAK.
that according to error reporting software in windows
yeah, but how many people actually use the "report this error to microsoft" feature?. I know everytime I get a crash, I opt to not send the report, and I know i'm not the only one that does this. Also, the only time this method for reporting error is used at all is when customers are on broadband connections, or in office networks (can you imagine wating for your modem to dial to report an error or a crash?), and what about those times when the crash is so bad your entire system needs to be restarted?. From what I can tell, this error reporting software only sends error reports regarding programs that crash, not the OS itself. So... 5% of windows users, who are on persistent connections, who use the error reporting software, who had a crash on an application that doesn't freeze the entire system, are crashing at least 2 times a day... The real number has to be much higher that that.
-K
-K
Shades of Dilbert
Microsoft has charged for updates for years silly. Just look at 98 SE, ME, and XP. Nothing changes this practice, except we can guarentee that service packs are now going to be rebranded as YP and ZP respectively to go along with the eXPerience.
Suddenly, I'm really thankful for my Win98 (1st edition) install -- it only crashes 2 or three times a WEEK!
of mysterious windows crash during system build, BEFORE there are any apps to mess it up. I've heard 10% but never seen that high, more like 8% from my view, and I've built 1000's of pc's and servers, and more using our new image process, so these are similar models, with standard equipment that for some strange reason get a variety of errors during the build process. 99% of those go along there merry after a reboot, and the remaining 1% is almost ALWAYS disk or memory errors.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
are still stuck at the "Windows was not shut down properly" screen.
But on to my topic,
Now how many people crash ONCE a day??? It seems odd that he would pick just twice a day to report, what would have looked more impressive would have been Bill saying "Only 5% of our users crash once or more using all of our operating systems."
I know as all you do it would have been a much more staggering figure since just about any Windows PC I see at work crashes once a day, so I can see why he didnt say it.
Glad my linux and OSX boxes crash on an average of once every 6 or 7 months or so.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Over 2 years old installation, zero crashes. Nuff said.
Laptop Reviews
So I pay for a copy of Windows and soon I might have to pay Microsoft to fix the bugs that shouldn't have been there in the first place?
I've been considering switching to Linux for a while now and having to pay more money to Microsoft for fixes would cause me to switch for sure. I'm not going to put up with crap like that!
Then there's the rest of us, company networks who have things nicely fire-walled, techies who configure their friend's computers to never contact M$ with 'quality assurance crash reports', installations for people who don't have 'net access (they -do- exist), etc...
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
I think Dilbert had one (rumored to be based on a true story) where the company decided to offer a bounty for every bug fixed. As usual, Wally decided to "write himself a minivan." I can already see bugs been inserted proactively by employees to boost their stock option value...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
You are driving. Unless the cop has it in for people who drive a car like yours, hasn't made his quota, or is having a generally rotten day and feels like sharing.
Choosing resistors for your home electronics projects, unless perhaps you are aiming for orbit, then you better get the spendy 1% or better kind.
Temerature for frying your pancakes on the stove. Actually, that's a pretty superior stove, as most vary wildly on what the subjective settings: LOW, MED, HIGH mean. At least ovens have degrees, but also seem to have their own opinions of 400 degrees.
Fan speed, processor temperature, etc. unless you're already at the limit and a 5% spike in voltage or temperature means you stop reading this text and start fishing out the backup hardware.
It's your annual cost of living increase. Beats 2% or none at all.
Your opponent just went into the red while you kept alive.
5% is not good enough when...
You understated your income tax three years ago and get smacked down for it.
They're mixing chemo drugs to pump into your veins for the next three months. You want it all exact and guarantees, alas, there are none...
The wing is good for 205% and the foam exerts 206% force.
You spend thousands of dollars on equipment, software and salaries and watch it all general 0 revenue while workers wait for a reboot, or spend hours or days recovering from lost or corrupt data.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
ok, 5% crash 2 or more times per day.
... and here's some for-pay updates to fix that problem, you drooling idiot customer. WINDOWS IS YOUR GOD. WORSHIP IT.
Let's say then, that maybe 10% crash once per day, 20% crash every couple of days, 40% crash once a week, etc. If we only go that far that's saying
75% of windows computers crash at least once a week.
If once a week doesn't sound like a lot to you, imagine how annoyed you'd be if your ISP was down once a week, because that's what we're talking about.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I think the reporter intentionaly mislead readers. Notice the article has like 2 sentances even mentioning the crash statistics. Paul Thurott covered the same speech and he had _NO_ mention of these statistics and he is usually very critical of Microsoft. I would be very interested to see a transcript of the original speeach to see exactly what Gates said to get this in context.
Imagine if Gates got a nickel for every time Windows crashed... oh, wait
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Nice flamebait.
Each time a major OS release comes out of Apple, they charge for it, yes. So does everyone else. Microsoft does it. SuSE does it. Don't let the version numbering for Mac OS X fool ya, 10.2 was a major upgrade over 10.1, which was a major upgrade compared to 10.0.
However, Apple doesn't charge for minor point releases. They're up to 10.2.6 right now in OS X, so you can see there have been several point releases since 10.2 was released, plus a smattering of security updates and individual application updates. Those are all free.
If Microsoft really does start charging for service packs, as the parent article for this thread suggests, their customers are going to revolt. From the Microsoft standpoint, they need a new revenue stream, and they want a way to subsidize the ongoing effort of improving products already in the market (like Windows 2000 Professional, since many users refuse to upgrade to XP).
I'm willing to pay for a major new OS release once every year or two, if the new features are compelling enough and my hardware can support it. But I'm not willing to pay for the vendor's bug-fixing efforts and minor feature fixes/additions.
Not to mention that 2 or more (what 10? 90?) times a day is really a lot and is probably an indication of a really serious problem. 2 to 3 crashes a week is probably my Windows norm and enough to make me want to huge my Linux box when I finally get home.
Quack, quack.
I have been using W2K for 3 years now and I have third party applications crash the OS daily. One current example is Eve-Online. That game is so buggy that I don't even get the BSOD, it just simply freezes to the point where only a hard boot will fix it. I also get innumerable errors that do things such as cause the sound to stop or some other weirdness that also requires a reboot to fix. And yes I am well aware of how to restart services and kill orphan processes.
Yes, Win9x was worse but not by much.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
My WinXP Pro isntallation crashes about four times a week. Microsoft does track these. Most installations are configured to create a core dump on a stop error. They use a more detailed mechanism to report these failures. In fact, where as the regular app crash reporting just sends data, the OS crash sends the data, connects to MS in IE and presents information to you.
Most of the time for me, that information is "this was caused by a device driver problem; we are investigating." Once however, it told me, "This crash was caused by a problem which has been fixed in SP-1. Please update your installation."
So, I have no doubt that the 5% statistic is really operating system crashes as the article states. Now, for all those non-connected machines or users that choose to deny the report to microsoft... well.... 5% could be a little low.
Based on my personal experience, I'd expect at least one third of all Win95, Win98 and Millennium to crash 2+ times a day.
As for NT, Win2k and WinXP, I'd expect them to crash much less frequently. In fact, I can't even remember Win2k or XP ever BSODing on me "out of the blue" and I do quite a bit of development on them at work. I think a great majority of BSODs on these systems happens due to a faulty hardware (like RAM), or crappy drivers. So, mod me down all you want, but MS got over BSOD hurdle starting Win2K.
That is not to say that there are no stability issues. I bet if I were to count number of times I had to reboot my system after:
a. Applying security update
b. Installing some seemingly innocuous application
c. Having my system become unbearably slow after copying/moving/deleting a large number of files.
d. Having my system go nuts with IE windows coming up dead, apps failing or taking forever to start, windows not repainting properly, etc.
those 5% could easily double.
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
"Knowing that no matter how much patches come out, Linux will be more secure - Pricess"
Price[le]ss
And that sums up the problem with Linux at this stage of the game: no matter what you want it to do, there seems to be one little piece that isn't there yet.
The error reporting mechanism in Windows does not report system crashes (a la those pretty blue screens that say IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL), to my knowledge. It is more likely that two or more fatal application crashes occur daily, and I bet in most of those cases it's because of horrible third-party software. I can't count how many times Macromedia's latest Flash plugin has crashed IE, Opera and Mozilla on me.
How are they calculating this? Are they using an estimated number of Windows installations, or is it only 5 percent of systems which log errors experiencing this? Most people I know turned error reporting off a long, long time ago.
And those Macs are running on adverage 24 hours a day whereas the PC's are shutdown every night since they seem to crash less than when we did leave them on everyday.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
wait just a gul darn minute ...
I was under the impression the error reporting tool didn't send any personally identifiable info back to MS. How, exactly, is he figuring out the frequency with which individual machines crash?
From what I can tell, this error reporting software only sends error reports regarding programs that crash, not the OS itself.
No. Twice, Windows has done a hard, cold BSOD and at the next boot, come up with a msg saying something like "Uh oh. Call home?" in slightly different words. Btw, in both cases the error was reported to be in a driver (yep, I read the details).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That would ad 200 dollars a month to the cost of "trying" to run a secure MS machine. They've totally warped your mind. You've become entirely too complacent. That and a newcomer to MS has NO IDEA what they are getting into. If they did, open source would never have gotten as big as it is now, and wouldn't be continueing to spread and grow. A lot of people are sick of "doing business the MS way".
Granted, the word "bugfixes" is not used. However, we all know that Microsoft typically does not refer to bug fixes as bug fixes. They call them "updates" or "Service Packs" or something similar, but never "bug fixes."
However, if you read the description of what these updates are (by reading the descriptions when you point your browser at the Windows Update site, which are provided before you actually install the updates), you would see that most of what they are is a bunch of bug fixes with perhaps a few minor feature upgrades thrown in.
Am I the only person who remembers that Windows 2000 shipped with tens of thousands of known bugs? I'm tired of the attitude some people have that it's OK to ship buggy software as long as there are no show stopper bugs. Because the definition of a "show stopper" can be subjective, and bugs that aren't show stoppers can still be highly aggravating and productivity-sapping.
So let's see. What software does Microsoft give away for free? Microsoft Money and Internet Explorer, sure, but what else? DirectX (an API that most game developers rely on heavily), the
The article talks about how, due to Longhorn's delay (availability in 2005 or later), "important features and updates to Windows XP would be added" prior to Longhorn's release. Clearly, Microsoft needs a revenue generator prior to 2005 in the OS space. Assuming sales for new OS licenses are going to be flat or in decline during the next year, it seems like they have little choice. About half their revenue comes from OS software. (The other half comes from Office, mainly.)
I mean, I suppose Microsoft could just suck it up for a year or two, but investors and industry pundits wouldn't take that very well, hence my statement that they have little choice in their course of action.
I've always wondered how useful that information would be to Microsoft. A lot of the crashes are due to non-Microsoft software. What good would that information do them?
Microsoft has a huge AppCompat lab that they run to test against thousands of applications whenever they release new versions of their software. If you send the non-Microsoft-software errors, it helps them see if maybe some new app is causing a problem. If it is, they may consider adding it to their AppCompat lab (although it does depend on the usage of the software). If they determine it's a Windows bug being surfaced by the app, they can work on fixing it. Otherwise, they can notify the vendor and say "Hey, your really popular program is crashing in these cases for this many people and here are the details we've gathered." It may also help them view trends like improper API usage and the like. That may help them improve the SDK docs so app developers have a better idea of how the APIs work.
Boom, instant feedback for application developers. This option is not available for Linux that I know of. It's the user's responsibility to find the right mailing list to join up to and try to debug the problem. They might even be told to submit a patch themselves before it'll be fixed.
-Shippy
I don't care what kind of application you're using, the job of the OS is to protect the hardware from access by individual programs, and to protect programs from each other. No app should EVER be able to crash an OS, game or not.
Device drivers are another matter, but still one within MS's control in a way; MS is the one that created the culture of every device having its own drivers, instead of the linux way where drivers are included in the kernel distribution and are written for devices generically. For instance, if you download the newest kernel, there's a driver in there for the RTL3019 NIC chipset. So all cards based on this chipset (which is a lot; it's a common low-cost chipset for NICs) use the same driver, unlike the Windows world where all those cards are about the same from a hardware POV, but the drivers are all different, and some may be better than others. Also, in Linux, the drivers are open-source just like the rest of the kernel, so people are able to file bug reports against them, debug them themselves, etc., unlike the Windows world where each driver is a little black box from the manufacturer, and may not even be supported anymore (common when the manuf. goes out of business). Admittedly, MS has finally, after all these years, started to recognize this problem, and is now trying this "signed" driver scheme to improve their situation.
Think about it. 100 million Windows users. 5% is 5 mil. At 2 crashes a day, that's 10 million transactions. Daily. Not even counting all the less frequent crashers.
.5 day to measure it), the throughput is 500 gigabytes per day, averaging 46.4 Megabits/second.
That's 416,666 transactions per hour, 6944 transactions per minute, or about 116 transactions per second.
If each report is 50K (don't have an exact figure, and I don't want to wait the
*That's* the kind of data processing system I'd like to buy!
-m
--- Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com
If we're talking about a new version of media player (presuming the new version isn't a security patch... ahem), them there's no reason that it need be free.
Microsoft has traditionally used the Windows Update service to push out new products from which they hope to make money. The new version of Media Player you mention may have some kind of DRM that they want to convince commercial vendors to use. If Microsoft charges for it, then it will have a lower adoption rate. Lower adoption means that commercial vendors will be less willing to use it. If they are less willing to use it, then Microsoft doesn't sell them some kind of expensive 'media server' for distributing content. The vendor goes to a Microsoft competitor and maybe even foregoes Microsoft products altogether.
Microsoft has a vested interest in seeing that people update their products and adopt new technologies being pushed by the software giant. Anything to discourage that is a mistake IMNSHO.
But it is theoretically impossible to for an observer (i.e., the OS) to determine whether another program (i.e., the app) will shut down properly. In computer science, this is known as the halting problem, and it can be mathematically proven.
Yes, that's the halting problem.
But that has nothing to do with OS stability. The OS does not have to determine if the program will end, or even shutdown properly. Since the OS is the arbiter of resources, it can make the decision to disallow a program from executing any further, without consulting the program beforehand. It is also the protector of programs, keeping one from trouncing another. All of these types of controls, implemented correctly, should prevent any application, no matter how badly behaved, from causing the OS to fail.
The halting problem is something else entirely.
Oh yes it is most definitely a troll, and one with a beard...
All Apple updates are FREE.
All Apple upgrades - like all M$ upgrades are paid for.
The shame, the horror, the guts these people have to charge for their work.
Now go and write a 100 times
"I know the difference between an upgrade and an update"
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Of course... don't forget that the 10.1 upgrade was the one that was free if you owned 10.0!
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
In any operating system, what is considered a crash is very subjective. With Linux, for example, there are many different issues:
/lib/libc.so.6 or some other important file?
1) Hardware problems: do we count crashes from buggy hardware? And if we don't, what about situations where the kernel could work around the hardware? Do we count those?
2) User stupidity: do we count users doing stupid things, such as deleting
3) Modules: Do we count crashes in third-party modules, like the nvidia drivers? Do we count them only if they bring down the whole system?
The same type of questions could be asked for Windows, and in fact, probably more could be asked. Windows has quite a few vendor-written drivers, and they can crash. Are those counted?
Anyone can write a program that crashes often - this should not reflect upon the quality of the OS. But where do we start counting crashes as being detrimental to the OS?
I haven't seen too many crashes on other people's computers running Windows XP or 2000 (much less than with Windows 98!), but I have seen more than on my Linux machines, at least if you remove crashes from my CVS builds, unstable kernels, etc. I tend not to have any crashes at the kernel, module, or X level at all.
Where do you draw the line? With a thriving hardware economy, you can't expect the OS developers to write all of the drivers for every different piece of hardware out there. As well, if you only write generic drivers then you rob the hardware manufacturers of the capabilty to customize their hardware offerings even if they are based on a common platform. Finally, if drivers have to be written by the OS developers, then new hardware is much less attractive. Hardware developers would have to jump through hoops, either getting the OS developers to write drivers or adding some sort of compatibility mode to their hardware, because otherwise you couldn't use the hardware. And that's saying nothing of making drivers open source, since drivers often contain intellectual property. I don't care what you think about open source, but wrong or right, most companies that own some sort of IP are generally not willing to give that away to everybody. If you want your platform to be seen as desirable to hardware developers, you need to keep that in mind.
Microsoft tries to work within these constraints in several ways. Most generic hardware items have generic drivers available from Microsoft. As well, Microsoft tries to build confidence by certifying drivers, as you mentioned. However, since certification takes a while, you'll notice that companies like nVidia, which try to rev their drivers every six months or so, generally have an older version that's Microsoft-certified. You won't be using that version, because it doesn't have the latest and greatest enhancements and fixes.
There's surely a better way to balance between "completely open and generic (and thus unattractive to hardware developers)" and "completely closed black box drivers", but I don't know what it is. In the meantime, gamers will generally accept less stability for more performance in their games, and thus games should be judged separately from other apps in terms of stability.
At least microsoft dosent make cars!
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
1. Click on URL, you're redirected to registration/login page
2. Go to URL bar, replace "www" with "archive" in the URL, leaving the rest alone, and hit ENTER
3. The system will bounce you around a few erroneous URLs, before returning you to the homepage
4. All NYT links will now work without registration, thanks to a special cookie set by the bouncing process
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
It just baffles me how and why people sit back and allow this to happen. People *ARE* this stupid, too. They will grab their ankles and allow MS to charge for updates. Where else does MS get this nerve to even so much let a whisper out of an idiotic idea such as this? Give me a break. You can't charge for updates. You can't ask someone to pay for something that didn't work in the first place. No sense in complaining about it though if no one's gonna do anything. Welcome to this idiotic world.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I see several comments that say an application crashing can't be blamed on Microsoft. I disagree. When there are fundamental flaws in the OS that guarantee crashes, Microsoft damn well deserves the blame. I've seen it. A memory leakage problem in Win NT 4 guaranteed that programs that did certain types of operations would crash eventually. There was no way to work around it.
Not all application crashes can be blamed on the OS, but the number is probably significant.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The problems with Windows are as follows:
#1. The core OS was not sufficiently protected from being "upgraded" by any application that was installed. Microsoft was the biggest offender with Office.
#2. The binary registry has all of the information for everything, users, applications, hardware, security, etc stored in it. If something goes wrong it is a major pain to fix it.
#3. The uninstall feature of Windows does not clear out everything. If I do install a buggy driver for a scanner and I want to remove it so it doesn't affect my system anymore, uninstalling does NOT always clean it out.
That is why, over time, Windows installations become less stable. Crap gets stuck in the registry and drivers get stuck in the OS directories and bad things start happening.
And don't give me any crap about that being the fault of the user. The OS should be able to control itself. Look at Debian's uninstall feature. Debian even has multiple levels of uninstall.
The problems with Windows are because of decisions Microsoft made. Not because of end-users.
Microsoft is going two ways with this. You can subscribe to their update service or pay a higher upgrade fee. That being said, Microsoft could purposely code flaws into Windows in order to make more money and keep people paying for updates.
What Bill needs to do is think fourth dimensionally. Updates continue to be free. Hell, Windows itself and all other Microsoft software should be completely free of charge as well. Microsoft will instead bring in ten times more profit by...
Charging for each software malfunction!
Microsoft will include special code in its kernels that will be backed up by a legally required instruction in the processor, along with a strong encryption path on the physical electronics that protect this particular instruction. This innovative technology will automatically detect software malfunctions and send a strongly encrypted packet to Microsoft. At that point, Microsoft will automatically bill the luser some set fee, like $20.00 for each occurance of a bug that causes an application to crash, $40.00 for a Windows BSOD, $60.00 for a complete crash requiring a cold boot, and, say, $100.00 for a crash that causes loss of data, including hard disk crashes unrelated to software.
This innovative technology would create tremendous value for Microsoft stockholders and employees of the company. Stockholders would make enormous profits on the millions upon millions of crashes that occur each day, compounded by the fact that Microsoft's software would inevitably get installed on more computers, being free of charge. Microsoft employees would not have to test or debug software as it is no longer a problem if the software malfunctions. This would shorten cycles, increase revenue and fulfill the enterprise integration strategy.
In short, Bill, stop thinking like a hungry beggar on the street trying to get a few more pennies for a beer and start thinking like a CEO of some powerful company.
Hey I've been programming for 20 years and you're quite correct -- programming is hard. But I must disagree with your assertion that just because it's hard means that bugs aren't mistakes. They ARE mistakes. And yes, it's generally somebody's fault when they occur. Level of difficulty doesn't let you off the hook here ... sorry.
There are methods for controlling bugs, but they aren't cheap. Think Space Shuttle flight control software. In terms of number of lines (100,000? in the core modules?) it is not a very big program, but they have spend big bucks studying it and being very conservative about making changes. Oh, and there are only 4 "sites" where it is in operation. The Microsoft model is that they probably spend less labor on their flagship products than the Shuttle or say the aerospace industry on flight control systems and autopilots. But they sell it to many more people for a much much lower unit cost and rake in the bucks in a way that Rockwell Collins or Sunstrand can only dream. Their big breakthrough business discovery is that they can sell (relatively) cheaply developed software for the desktop, and people are not going to care in a way that counts.
5% of our tires explode while using them. You can have replacements but we will charge you full price. By accepting our EULA, you agree to these terms. Do you Accept these terms?
No means YES, Yes means YES.
Enough Said
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Can you imagine if there were thirty different ways to lay bricks?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what makes you think there aren't? Are you an expert at brick laying? I suspect the answer is no. I'm not trying to insult you. I've just learned the hard way that it is dangerous to claim something is easy that you don't really understand.
Harder than anything else in the physical world
Again, I would caution you to be careful about such claims. I'll concur that programming is really, really hard to do well. Lord knows I've tried. But is it the hardest thing in the world? My guess is no. I've done a bunch of programming and other engineering and you know what? The technical stuff is hard but no where near as hard as the people stuff. Trying to manage a team of people towards some productive goal is usually the hardest part of my job. And I'm not even particularly introverted or shy. The phrase "herding cats" comes to mind...
Or if you want a more technical example, how about medicine? The human body is an unbelievably complex entity which we understand far less about than we do digital computers. Do you think programming is harder than medicine? At least you have 30 ways to solve a problem. There are diseases for which we don't even have names, much less a cure. Be glad that your job gives you so many ways to help solve your customer's problems. Doctors often don't have that luxury.
Anyway the point is that there are a lot of activities that are really challenging. Please don't assume that just because what you do is hard, that everything else must be easy. It just ain't so.
This is true only if you elect to compile the kernel module corresponding to this driver into your kernel. The source for the driver is distributed with the kernel, but it is up to you to elect its inclusion. This mechanism is no better than Windows, because some drivers just aren't included with the kernel sources, just as some drivers aren't shipped in-box with Windows. So you're still stuck with fetching your own driver direct from the vendor of your hardware.
Stock distro kernels typically include tons of drivers in their kernels just in case you happen to have a device needing that driver; in most cases, the driver tries to load and fails to initialize, and unloads itself from memory. In my opinion, this is a somewhat clumsy mechanism, but it works. At install, Windows determines what PnP devices are on your system and installs only the drivers for which a PnP ID has been discovered.
This is just completely wrong. Windows ships with in-box "class drivers" based on generic chipset specifications just as any other operating system does. In fact, Windows ships with a class driver for the Realtek 8139x chipset that works with just about any such card on the market (D-link 530TX comes to mind). The reason you might want a IHV-specific driver for your particular card is that some IHV's enable extra functionality that the class drivers do not support (wake-on-lan, encryption coprocessors, etc). Class drivers are a good way to get support out for devices quickly, but they are much worse at supporting specific features in individual cards.
Again, only the ones included with the kernel are guaranteed to be open source. NVidia's display drivers are most certainly not open source. And you can't assume that all Windows drivers are closed-source, either: Realtek (makers of the RTLxxxx chipsets you alluded to earlier) typically releases source code so that IHVs that implement NICs using their chipset can easily adapt some working code to their drivers. Driver signing has nothing to do with making drivers open source, or eliminating problems with vendors going out of business, so I fail to see the connection there. WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) testing and signing is a method by which Microsoft can provide some basic level of quality assurance on device drivers that they do not directly produce. Poorly written kernel-mode device drivers are still the #1 cause of Windows crashes (according to some press release that I can't find at the moment), and Microsoft is attempting to address this by helping improve driver quality through WHQL and eliminating the need for future kernel-mode drivers (replacing them with user-mode drivers whenever possible, I'm sure).Regardless, you will find no such centralized basic quality control mechanism for Linux drivers. If you sincerely believe that Linux device drivers are of higher overall quality than their Windows equivalents, I have some land to sell you right next to an oasis in Baja. (And before you flame me, I completely understand that Linux drivers often must be reverse-engineered, and that is a difficult process. But while I sympathize with Linux driver writers, this difficulty still doesn't support the claim that the resulting Linux driver model is superior to its Windows counterpart.)
Can you imagine if there were thirty different ways to lay bricks?
A quick google search for "brick bond" gives 161000 results.
Some of the choices are:
stretcher bond
Flemish bond
English bond
American
English garden wall bond
rat trap (or Chinese) bond
Sussex bond
header bond.
Now, I am not a mason, so if I can find this many choices in a 3 minute search, there are probably more than 30 ways to lay bricks. Furthermore, I suggest to you that editing a brick wall is much more difficult than editing software.
The interesting thing, of course, is that so few bugs have been found. Imagine if M$ had this policy!
Did Gates ever concider that the other 95% of that statistic don't send in the error reports beacuse they know that other information it sends.
I would bet you anything that you'd find similar BS in the US, Australia and Canada.
"Be careful or be roadkill" - Calvin
Yep, and since MS has a habbit of releasing new versions of their EULA with the updates, not to mention a certian lack of testing the updates, that's where I leave them when I see them. Instead, I remove Outlook, remove all the IE icons from the desktop and install Opera or Mozilla (depending on the user), and put all the Windows machines behind a decent firewall.
That tends to sort out the security issues; I've had Windows machines used by total non-IT-literate people for three to four years at a time under this sort of setup with NO anti-virus programs and also no viruses. IE and Outlook are the only vector used by most viruses today and open ports cover the rest. The days when they were carried by floppies is long gone and most places have a strict "No external discs" rule anyway.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
When one buys Champagne one expects it come from Champagne.
However, when one buys a Swiss Roll one expects a particular style of cake not for it to come from Switzerland.
I think the Commission has every right to protect the names of certain goods.
When one buys a Linux distribution one would expect it to come with a Linux kernel. Imagine if it came with a "Linux compatible" kernel. That's why Linux is a trademark.
Champagne can only be champagne if it is made with grapes grown in Champagne. I'm quite happy to buy Champagne Compatible so long as I'm pre-warned.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If I buy a car I own a car.
If I bought a car from Microsoft I would be buying the legal right to drive that car.
A subtle difference.
But the only defect I can argue about in the latter would be in the licence agreement.
An amazing set of hoodwinks.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If your Windows install doesn't report an error on boot you've forgotton to install everything.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
A lucky 5% has 2 crashes a day, the remaining 95% has 3 or more!
My Stack Overflow user
Reading the threads sparked by this article, there is quite a bit of misinformation and misunderstanding of how Windows works and what causes crashes. I would like to clear up some of this confusion.
First off, there is quite a bit of confusion about application crashes vs. operating system crashes. While I do not know what Gates was referring to when he mentioned the 5% number, I'm assuming it's an operating system crash.
Application crashes are caused when an application causes an exception and does not handle that exception. (Most frequently, an access violation, error code 0xc0000005.) Ultimately, if the OS cannot find another exception handler that the app has put into place, the operating system invokes the default debugger as the last-chance exception handler. Typically, this exception handler is Dr. Watson (drwtsn32.exe), which will dump the process' address space to the user.dmp file.
The currently installed default debugger (drwtsn32 can be replaced using the aedebug registry value) will trap all unhandled *user mode* exceptions.
Unhandled *kernel mode* exceptions cause KeBugCheckEx() to be called, which is the function that throws the blue screen of death, and writes a memory.dmp to disk (if configured) and reboots the system (if configured). The machine may also be configured to report the bugcheck by sending a 64K minidump to microsoft's OCA site when the machine reboots.
I routinely examine memory dumps to determine the causes of Windows blue screen crashes.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that >90% of the blue screens I examine are caused by non-Microsoft device drivers. When a user installs code into kernel mode, there's nothing the OS can do to prevent that code from taking down the system.
Antivirus software, remote control software, realtime disk mirroring software, and hardware device drivers all install in kernel mode. (Want a list of device drivers running on your system? Run pstat.exe from the Resource Kit and examine the last section of the output.)
Yes, there are many known blue screens caused by MSFT software. To date, Microsoft has done an excellent job of fixing these problems, in my opinion. I have personally witnessed MSFT creating fixes for newly discovered bluescreen bugs in less than a week. (That's less than a week between MSFT getting the call about a blue screen, analyzing the dump, determining the cause of the problem, and delivering a fix to the customer.)
I cannot comment on Microsoft's future plans, since I do not know what they are. But in my opinion, Microsoft has done an excellent job of fixing blue screens caused by its products. And as I've said: the vast, vast majority of blue screens on Windows are not caused by Microsoft code. You cannot blame Microsoft for a device driver written by another vendor that does something that is explicitly illegal (according to the DDK) which therefore brings down the system. (Is it the cop's fault when you're pulled over for a speeding ticket?)
Microsoft's primary problem here, in my opinion, is that MSFT is automatically blamed for all blue screens, when in fact only a tiny percentage of BSODs are actually caused by Microsoft code. If Microsoft could close the loop on OCA and report to the users the cause of their crashes more frequently, and users could begin to appreciate how few blue screens really are caused by Microsoft code, I think the collective opinion of Windows' stability would change greatly.
Just to add value to this post, here are some common bugchecks caused by software. Any kernel mode code can cause these bugchecks:
STOP 0x0000000A (0x0A)
STOP 0x1E
STOP 0x50
STOP 0x7F
STOP 0x7E
STOP 0x8E
And hardware bugchecks:
STOP 0x9C (replace your CPU)
STOP 0x1A (replace your RAM)
STOP 0x4E (replace your RAM)
STOP 0x77 (examine your hard drive system)
STOP 0x7A (examine your hard drive system)
Any STOP code that begins with 0xc....... indicates some kind of environment problem, usually you get these during bootup.
But the reason it takes so long to fix them is stupid design.
The myth that complexity is only achieved through complicated design is pervasive in computer programming, typified in Windows, and becoming more prevalant in Linux applications as Gnome and KDE become the standards.
The UNIX operating system was highly complex even in the days when it was dominated by small programs that were designed with the The Unix Philosophy. Small programs that did one thing well were the rule and complexity was achieved by utilizing clean well documented interfaces, standard data storage formats (ASCII), and non-captive UIs. The result is that most bugs can be tracked down to a specific small program that can either be fixed relatively quickly by the maintainer, or be replaced with one of a number of equivalent programs (either permanantly, or until the bug is found and fixed).
Windows design is mostly large programs that try to do everything for themselves, although they do share library functions. The result is huge masses of code that can effectively hide bugs indefinately (shatter), cannot be replaced with another program without breaking the OS (integration), and that the company seems to think of as "not our problem".
The issue I have with the desktop environments is that they seem to be following in the footsteps of Windows design, creating a tangled mess of (what should be) unecessary dependancies, huge libraries, and code that no one person is inheirently familiar with. As yet, I am unaware of any security problems inherent in either Gnome or KDE, but I do consider it a bug that installing a spreadsheet requires also requires a sound library to work properly.
Complex ends can be achieved through simple means and complex programs or OS do not need to be complicated.
Read, L